Constructive Criticism
by peroxidepest17
Summary: Yuki hears popular opinion on his work.


**Title:** Constructive Criticism  
**Author:** Celeste  
**Universe:** Gravitation  
**Theme/Topic:** N/A  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Pairing:** YukixShuuichi  
**Spoilers/Warnings:** OOCness, but um, the only spoilers here are for those WHO HAVEN'T SEEN THE SERIES.  
**Word Count: **1,780  
**Time: **1.13 hrs  
**Summary:** Yuki hears popular opinion on his work.  
**Dedication:** Everyone for the warm birthday wishes and the great presents! Thanks!  
**A/N: **I SHOULD BE WRITING FOR MY BLEACH 10,000 WORD CHALLENGE STORY. Or at the very least, studying the Japanese that I'VE MANAGED TO COMPLETELY FORGET OVER THE COURSE OF THE SUMMER. But no, I had to get an idea for a Gravitation (of all things) fic in the shower. Well, fuck me. I speed wrote this sucker and hopefully it's done and I'll never have to think of it again and I can just FINISH MY STUPID BLEACH STORY. Argh.  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine, though I wish constantly.  
**Distribution:** Just lemme know.

* * *

He's in the living room working tonight because his office needs to be vacuumed desperately, and really, it's best for writers to occasionally change their environments for fear of getting repetitive if constantly working the same surroundings day in and day out.

Right.

Shuuichi's on tour, as rock stars tend to be, and so it's quiet enough in the apartment that he can work anywhere he chooses without running the risk of being disturbed like he might have had the brat been home and in the living room (which he'd practically claimed as his own domain), blasting music or singing at the top of his lungs or watching idiotic cartoons when he had writer's block on the latest sugar-pop bubblegum dance tune he was slated to finish by the next morning.

But none of that is a problem tonight since the little brat isn't here, and Yuki supposes it's as good a chance as any to get out of his dark office for a while and sit on the couch to finish his latest work, enjoying the peace and quiet that only happens when his idiot lover is far, far away.

Three pages into the denouement of his novel and Yuki finds himself switching on the TV.

Just for some background noise.

He turns to one of those snobby intellectual literary programs purely out of ego, and seeing his name flash across the screen on one particular station, he pauses mid-sentence just to see what the popular idiots are saying about him on their book talk shows lately. Hopefully he'll be able to get some laughs out of their pretentious bullshit.

"Personally, I think Yuki-sensei's work is drivel," one man begins with an air of high blown disdain. "Anyone can see it's formulaic romance merely meant to cater to teenage girls and lonely housewives."

_Damn right_, Yuki thinks, glad to finally find someone out there who knows what he's talking about. _Those teenage girls and lonely housewives are where the big sales are._

"What I think I sense from these commercially popular works is a sense of self-loathing from the author. Personally, I think Yuki-sensei could do something really unique if he put his mind to it, but he's trapped himself in this supermarket romantic genre and just hates himself too much to let himself out of that box," the man continues emphatically.

_Yup. I'm a right bastard that way,_ Yuki agrees with a little nod as he types away at his keyboard.

"Personally, I think his career would have long ago died out if the buzz generated with his supposed, illicit romance with Bad Luck singer Shindou Shuuichi hadn't materialized out of nowhere to resuscitate it."

The woman who's hosting the show steps in then, asking the man, "You don't think his relationship with Shindou-san is genuine?"

"Of course not. When you look at the timing of their "outing" to the general public, it was at a time when Bad Luck was crawling out of the ground for the first time and Yuki-sensei's books were beginning to receive their first harsh reviews. The timing of such a scandalous affair couldn't have been more manufactured. Especially when one considers Yuki-sensei's notorious reputation as a ladies' man."

_I am quite the lady killer, aren't I?_ Yuki muses as he continues his work, mood considerably brightened at having found someone on TV who isn't a complete nincompoop.

The woman shakes her head at this point and starts to put her two cents in, beginning with, "I'm sure Shindou-san and Yuki-sensei are in a genuine relationship."

"What makes you so sure of that?" the man asks skeptically.

_Yeah, what makes you so damn sure?_

"Well for one, these sham romances usually last a few weeks, a couple of months at the most. The buzz eventually dies down and then they break things off to generate it again. But the two of them have been together for almost a year now. Surely that would be stretching the media gimmick theory a bit too far, wouldn't it?"

Yuki blinks. _Has it really almost been a whole year? Damn._

The man is still having none of the woman's explanations "Well, you have to make an acceptation for their rather…abnormal relationship, don't you think? Surely you realize that had Eiri chosen a woman celebrity to have a fling with, the consequences and strategies of going about such an everyday affair would have had to be vastly different from the way a relationship between two men would be viewed by the media. The thing with Shindou-san has considerably longer shelf life for all its rarity, don't you think?"

Yuki smirks evilly at that assessment. _Yup, we're damn deviants, is what we are._

"Of course I've considered that aspect of their relationship," the woman observes. "But if you take a careful look at Yuki-sensei's writing over the past eleven months or so, there's a sudden and very obvious change in his narrative styles and structures, which can only be contributed to Shindou-san, considering the fact that he's really the only newsworthy aspect of Yuki-sensei's private life in this particular timeframe. I'm surprised you didn't pick up on it, Hamada-san. There's really been rather surprising turn in Yuki-sensei's stylistic patterns lately."

The man, intrigued, leans closer at that revelation. "Has there?"

Yuki blinks himself. _Has there?_

"Well if you look at the first two titles he released this past year, there's a decidedly dark bent to them, don't you think? Lots of drama and psychological games between the two love interests. There seems to be almost something impartial about how he views them, throwing them against each other so roughly such that the only real bond left between the hero and the heroine is sex. Internally, they're so self-centered and traumatized by past experiences that they can't function together in any sense beyond the physical."

"I suppose I could see that," the man concedes after a moment of thought.

_The bitch is crazy, don't listen to her._

"But if you look over the next two, or even three works, you notice that the things driving his lovers apart have a more external bent to them than in all previous Yuki Eiri novels. There are still misunderstandings between the characters due to internal flaws of course, but the driving force of the conflict is always an outside source in these works. A jealous ex-lover or a dying parent, to take the first of the three books as an example."

"I see, I see."

_I don't. What the hell?_

"Then, if you look at his most current title, you notice that the ending is much more optimistic than any of the previous ones, the heroine's cancer going into remission and the hero's taking a stand against his older brother to overcome the final obstacle between them. While it ends ambiguously, and I've heard other critics trying to argue that it's just as bleak as his earlier works, I think that it can go either way when you take into account the sheer number of hopeful images prior to the end, for example, the way Yuki-sensei describes the light magnifying and dispersing off of the broken mirror in her dark attic, or the constant theme of the music box music that leads them back to one another time after time. If you take those sorts of things into your interpretation of the ending, it's decidedly more optimistic than any of his other works have been. It's almost, almost, a happy ending even."

"Your argument has validity," the man is forced to concede, "though I don't think any of this proves the honesty of his relationship with Shindou."

_Damn straight!_

"Fair enough," the woman allows, laughing. "But you have to at least agree with my point about the upturn in mood of Yuki-sensei's latest works."

_No he doesn't. Shut up._

"… I might even chance to say that his next work will have a _real_ happy ending, Hamada-san."

Yuki stares at the television in horror.

He would _never._ There would _never_ be… and how could she even say the last one was happy? How is cancer happy?

He isn't any sort of medical expert or anything, but Yuki thinks that he did enough research for his last book to know that cancer in remission doesn't necessarily mean cancer cured, and that it could come back at any second and just kill her as soon as leave her for a happily ever after. It could _kill her_ dammit!

That's why he'd written _remission._ Not _cured._

She could still _die._ At any time, really. Right now, even.

And furthermore, the crazy woman obviously has no clue what she's going on about, because he knows for a fact that he's _not_ becoming more optimistic. There are no such things as happy endings. Not for him, and not for any of his works. They aren't made for that sort of storytelling.

He sits for a moment with that thought circling in his head and eventually turns off the TV with a decisive air. He doesn't need to think about this anymore. Those critics don't even know which end of the book to start reading from in the first place.

Right. Best not to dwell on some dumb thing some mouthy woman was blabbering on and on about.

Especially since…

_Cancer is not happy_.

_It's NOT._

_Stupid, crazy…_

In a moment of panic, he finds himself suddenly grabbing the phone from its cradle on the table beside the couch, his fingers automatically dialing a familiar phone number despite it being almost the middle of the night on a weekday.

Two rings sound before he hears someone picking up from the other end, a surprised but very pleased, "Eiri-san? Is that you?"

"Tohma."

Hearing the rattled timbre of the blonde's voice, Tohma immediately asks, "What's the matter?"

"When someone goes into remission for cancer, is that good?"

Silence for a moment.

And then, "Um, not unless you wanted that person to die, I suppose."

"Dammit."

_Dammit._

He hangs up with a sigh.

For a moment he stares straight ahead at his latest work, which is glowing up at him from the screen of his computer, literally moments away from completion.

_Getting your memory back is a good thing too, isn't it?_

Making a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, he forcibly slams the laptop closed without hitting the save button.

Well, there goes _that_ idea.

Standing up, he heads to the bedroom with an air of defeat, pausing to scowl at the picture of Shuuichi on his nightstand as he pulls back the comforter.

Still frowning at the picture, he tells himself that when his editor screams and has an aneurysm at him tomorrow for not finishing by deadline, he'll very simply explain to her that his scrapping two-hundred and forty-eight pages of text is completely Shuuichi's fault.

Having made a mental note on that, he crawls into his bed, suddenly exhausted, and tells himself that the next few days will be spent extensively researching the _permanent_ kind of amnesia.

_Happy ending my ass._

Yuki Eiri doesn't _do_ happy endings.

They're all _Shuuichi's_ fault.

**END**


End file.
